'Dear Cousin Julius, We Trust on Our God and on You...'

By Michael Winerip

Published: April 27, 1997

Last fall, while on a yearlong assignment in Canton, Ohio, I made a speech at the local Jewish Community Center, and at the end, a woman I did not know asked if I would be willing to look at some old letters. ''There are a lot more, if you're interested,'' she said, handing them to me in a thin purple folder, letters that were more than half a century old and had been locked away in a suitcase, forgotten for years.

The two men writing those letters, excerpted here for the first time, were cousins who had never met and had virtually nothing in common beyond being Jews. But suddenly, in 1938, the German cousin desperately needed help from his American cousin. Max Schohl, the German, was 54 that year, a renaissance man who spoke several languages, was an inventor, entrepreneur, hunter, skier, community leader. He had earned a doctorate in chemical engineering from a top German university and had fought for the German Army during World War I, winning several medals and attaining the rank of captain.

In 1920, he purchased a failing factory in Florsheim, a village near Frankfurt, and using his genius for chemistry, turned it into a thriving manufacturer of leather dyes and soaps, with 150 employees and offices in Milan, Paris and Sao Paulo. Max and Liesel Schohl lived with their two daughters in a large home with a wine cellar and shoeshine room in the basement. During the Depression, the Schohls set up a soup kitchen for Florsheim's poor.

Julius Hess, the American, was 41, married with no children, a quiet, somewhat meek man who had never been to college or war and did not own a car. In 1938, Julius was making $86 a week selling men's clothing at his brother-in-law's store, Kaufman Bros., in downtown Charleston, W.Va. In those days, Charleston's upper class -- the chemical- and coal-company executives and the merchant families like Julius's wealthy cousins, the Midelburgs -- built mansions in the valley along the Kanawha River. Julius and his wife, Bea, lived on the other side of Charleston, the west side, among Appalachia's steep hills in a three-bedroom house they shared with Bea's parents.

By early 1938, Nazi laws had forced Jews to give up their businesses and had frozen their assets. Max Schohl loved Germany, but that summer he sat at his desk in the great living room on the first floor of his Florsheim home and, using two fingers, typed letters, first to his elderly aunts, who had immigrated to America decades earlier and had known him as a youngster, and then to their children, the American-born cousins who were strangers. Of all the American relatives, Julius Hess, the clothing store salesman, was the one willing to sign an immigration affidavit to bring the Schohl family here.

The voice of Max Schohl's letters is not the refined German of a gentleman. It is the broken English of a refugee. Writing the letters was torture for him. So much had to be left unsaid to insure that the mail would clear Nazi censors. And like so many of the world's refugees, he was trying to save himself and his family in a language not his own.

Florsheim, Germany, Aug. 3, 1938

Dear Cousins,

About six weeks ago . . . wrote to our Aunt Theresa. She answered me, we should have a good hopeness that we would come to U.S.A. But it is clear, our Aunt Theresa is too old and she cannot do anything for us. . . .

I cannot have any possibility in this country to find an occasion to work. So I must go out of this country to find in a more friendly state. . . . I am a chemist, who has learned many things and with many experience. I am sure, when I am in Your country, I will find a position for me. Some weeks ago a business friend of Milwaukee I have seen here and he promised to me, when I came to U.S.A., he would give me a position in his factory. Another friend of mine in Franklin, Pa. . . . is a manager in a great petrol refinery. . . .

You see we are not without any chance in Your country. But the most important thing is, that we have not an affidavit. . . . I hope my cousins will do that for me. I think when You . . . and my cousin Ferdy Midelburg help together, it will not be difficult for You this affidavit to give. I have not the address of cousin Ferdy and I beg You to communicate with him and to declare our situation. I am sure, when you all would know the real situation, you would not wait a day. . . .

Excuse, please, my bad English. Several years ago, I spoke quite good. But to time I have no more practice. I am sure when I am in U.S.A. in a few months I speak all what I need. Your grateful cousin, Max.

Charleston, W.Va., Sept. 13, 1938

Dear Cousin Max,

It is with much pleasure that I can write you this letter to inform you that I am doing everything in my power to arrange for your coming to this country. . . . I have signed your affidavits $(of sponsorship$) and they should be in the American Consul's hands. . . .

I have requested two of our most influential men, Hon. Rush D. Holt, United States Senator, and Hon. Joseph Smith, United States Congressman, to write the American Consul for his help, and I am assured that both of them will do what they can. . . .